In order to understand what happens to health when productivity rises over time, it is useful to compare a final output at two stages of productivity: an extremely low level and the optimum level.

For concreteness, we can imagine a physically onerous task such as digging coal from a seam.
This situation is depicted in the following figure.

Productivity is too low for production

Productivity is so low that input cost exceeds potential value at all quantities. As productivity rises over the years, the entire input cost curve will shift slowly down, and then rapidly up. Concurrently, rising productivity will cause the rational output quantity to increase from zero.

Under the initial conditions cited, workers are digging for coal with nothing more than shovels, or possibly even their bare hands. Drudgery is therefore intense, injuries and deaths are frequent, and the input cost curve is extremely high.

Because effectual value cannot exceed potential value, coal is an irrational output in this situation, and the optimum output quantity is therefore zero.

With enough time, sweat, injuries, and deaths the workers might be able to extract sufficient coal from a seam to warm their houses. However, the health lost in obtaining this coal would be higher than the maximum health that could be gained from burning it.

An important general conclusion is that, until technical developments have reached the point where productivity allows input cost to drop below potential value when production begins, such production is irrational.

In the situation depicted, the village should obtain its warmth from wood and other fuels that can be obtained at lower input cost than coal.

A fundamental issue facing people in this situation relates to the social choice of technological complexity. If this village decides that it must replace wood with coal, then it is compelled to accept a level of technological complexity that will deliver the required productivity. It might make this choice, for example, if its population is rising and the surrounding forests are being destroyed.

However, people may decide that they are content with the current level of complexity. In this case, they would reject the increase in productivity and the use of coal. Instead they would seek to lower their population and to reduce their waste when burning wood, thus increasing their ecological efficiency for this activity.

Under favorable conditions, these measures would permit the society to continue indefinitely with its technologically simple mode of life.

Rising productivity causes the input cost curve to move down and output quantity to increase. Productivity is optimized when these two effects have maximized potential gains.

Input cost has dropped from its original level, IC1, to the minimum achievable level, IC2. This means that productivity, taken in isolation, has been optimized.

If productivity is lower than this, the input cost curve will still be above IC2.

If productivity is higher, the input cost curve will have returned to a level above IC2.

Because input cost is lower than potential value in this situation, potential gains are being achieved, and the output is not necessarily irrational, although the final verdict on this depends on its effectual value.

If output quantity increases from 0 to Q1, these potential gains have been maximized.

Note what would happen if productivity rose further. Not only would the input cost curve move up, output quantity would increase beyond its optimum level, thereby reducing net potential gains.

Driving productivity too high therefore diminishes aggregate health in two discrete ways: through an input cost curve that rises above its lowest attainable level, and through a loss- creating increase in output quantity.

From this discussion it is clear that productivity can be too high as well as too low. Excessive productivity is in fact inevitable when an economy is guided by capitalist logic, which tends to continuously increase productivity for two reasons: to drive output quantity up in order to increase profits, and to drive financial costs down so that national firms can compete more successfully in global trade.

Even in the capitalist world, however, environmental concerns and social pressures will occasionally force productivity to move in the opposite direction.

Some interesting examples appeared in a Scientific American article that discussed the threat of fishery collapses from modern fishing methods. In addressing the problem of bycatch (unwanted species caught in nets), which at the time killed hundreds of thousands of dolphins per year in the hunt for tuna, the author states:

One solution to the bycatch from nets would be to fish for tuna with poles and lines, as was practiced commercially in the 1950s. That switch would entail hiring back bigger crews, such as those laid off when the fishery first mechanized its operations.1

The author also cites a law requiring oyster-dredging boats in Chesapeake Bay to be powered by sail instead of by motor, and another law that forbids the use of nets pulled between two boats ("pair trawls"). His summary statement is this:

Numerous other regulations on sizes and total amount of the catch, as well as allocation and allowable equipment, can be viewed as acknowledgements of the need to curb efficiency in order to achieve wider social and ecological benefits.2

These steps were taken to reduce the tuna catch and increase the number of fishing jobs. In the preceding figure the reduced catch would be represented by the leftward shift of output quantity, assuming that the latter has exceeded its optimum.

2. Ibid., 53.
Another example of the potential benefits arising from reduced productivity is found in E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful: "As I have shown, directly productive time in our society has already been reduced to about 3.5% of total social time, and the whole drift of modern technological development is to reduce it further, asymptotically to zero. Imagine we set ourselves a goal in the opposite direction — to increase it sixfold, to about 20%, so that 20% of total social time would be used for actually producing things, employing hands and brains, and, naturally, excellent tools. An incredible thought! Even children would be allowed to make themselves useful, even old people. At one-sixth of present-day productivity, we should be producing as much as at present. There would be six times as much time for any piece of work we chose to undertake — enough to make a really good job of it, to enjoy oneself, to produce real quality, even to make things beautiful. Think of the therapeutic value of real work; think of its educational value." (p. 161)
This is a lovely image, but Schumacher neglects to mention that reducing productivity in this manner would violate the logic of capitalism, and therefore has revolutionary implications. Reformists invariably forget — or willfully ignore — the harsh political implications of their economic visions.